Oneshot Twoshot Redshot Blueshot
by Pseudinymous
Summary: A collection of oneshots and twoshots, although I'm not all that sure about how to approach writing redshots and blueshots. 1st: Loopity-Loops - Vlad discovers that reality isn't quite as tangible as it seems...


**Author's Note:**  
Restarting my old oneshot collection! But, with different oneshots. :) Keeping in the spirit of things, I decided to start with a bit of a weird, messed-up one that I wrote too late at night.

**Blanket Disclaimer:  
**I own the computer I wrote this on, and not much else. Certainly not any Danny Phantom characters, events, or anything else relating to the show.

* * *

**Loopity-Loops**  
A Oneshot by Pseudinymous

* * *

The hour stroked twelve, and Vlad was none too happy.

He was getting older. Perhaps as a half-ghost he should have been granted with some sort of miraculous age-freezing ability, but alas, no such luck was his. He aged, his ghost form aged, and everything about him felt... altogether a lot more _creaky _than he remembered it being. Daniel, of course, had been a completely different story; the boy aged at snail-pace, retaining his youthful exterior as if time had stopped when he was fourteen. He was getting _stronger_, too. That wasn't a pleasant thought.

Perhaps it had something to do with the way the portal shocked him, he thought. Daniel had received the full-force of a fully-functioning ghost portal, whereas Vlad had only been blasted in the face. Maybe _that _was why he couldn't improve...

Either way, things were pretty dreary at the moment. Sure, he had spent his life taking as much _from _other's lives as he could to make his own just that little bit nicer, but it wasn't enough. Maddie wouldn't allow herself to be stolen away like money out of some bank. He couldn't intangibly reach into her heart and steal it. It was something that had to be _given_...

Life wasn't very fair, when everything was said and done.

Was this really the reality he had to live through? Sad, lonely bachelorhood, when all he really longed for was a family? What if it was all different, what if this reality... was a fake one, constructed entirely out of unconscious thought? The notion of one's self losing all sanity was usually an uncomfortable one, but in this case Vlad found it to be a form of salvation, somehow, even though he knew he was perfectly sane.

Dinner arrived, after the mayor had barked at Kyle, his personal chef, to make him something "that single-handedly makes up for every wrong in this world. Especially the wrongs against _me_". What he got was a meticulously-prepared lasagne, which might have done the trick only if he were the reincarnation of Garfield. Vlad _hated_ Italian food. He grumbled about this as he ate, alone on his enormous dinner table.

"Well then, why did you hire an Italian chef?"

Vlad stopped eating dinner so quickly that the fork dropped out of his hand. The voice had come out of nowhere; if it were a ghost, he'd have been able to sense it. No... apparently, this was nothing at all.

"I am not _nothing_!" the voice lamented. "You're losing your touch, Vladdy."

There it was - a name only Jack would dare call him. In spite of himself, Vlad found himself shouting "What correlation is there between yourself and Jack Fenton?!" for the rest of the mansion to hear. Somewhere up the hall, Maddie the Cat screeched and bolted.

"Apart from your mind, nothing." Snorted the voice, quite happy – like everyone else – to deride Vlad in whatever way it could. "Such a sad little man, content to play in his childhood fantasies."

This time Vlad did not grant it the privilege of a reply. He got up, looked around to make sure none of his servants was in the vicinity, then transformed into Plasmius, the Wisconsin Ghost. "I do not revel within the fantasies of a child!" Vlad barked, to the air in general. In his time he had communicated with a lot of invisible entities, but when it came to an entity that wasn't even_ there_, he was just that little bit lost. He didn't even know which direction he should generally be facing, and so decided to pretend the voice was part of his lasagne. It was therapeutic in its own strange way.

"What're you gonna do, fruit-loop? Ectoblast me to oblivion? You're gonna do _that _to a sad little lasagne, like myself?"

"Too right I am!" said Vlad, already condensing the freezing pink energy in his palms. "What are you, anyway? I _demand _you show yourself!"

"Dear, I'm a figment of your imagination."

Vlad stopped abruptly, then blasted the lasagne to smithereens anyway. He would have the cleaner fix that mess later... or, he would have if it didn't spontaneously transform into none other than Danny Phantom, who began to float up off the table and ended up somewhere near the ceiling.

"What's the matter? Am I impeding on something?" the voice asked, now assimilating its own strange tone onto the voice of Daniel. "Maddie got your tongue? Your cat, I mean."

Three more bright pink ectoblasts set sail from Vlad's hands, destroying certain select areas of ceiling and altogether missing the half-ghost child, who dodged them spectacularly. He knew it wasn't _Daniel_, even if it moved and grinned and _looked _awfully like him. But it was also something impersonating him, which made it a greater target than even the child himself. Fed up with all the dodging, Vlad split himself by four.

"Two can play at that game!" said the voice, apparently delighted. Although after replicating the stunt it did feel the need to add "Actually, that's eight. But eh, Daniel was never very good at math, was he?"

"Worthless child!" the four Vlads spat, each throwing their own ectoblasts which, needless to say, the voice as four copies of Daniel dodged with ease. There was one exception; the farthest Danny had one of the blasts clip his shoulder, but it seemed as though... he wasn't even affected by it! "Tell me what you are!" Vlad demanded, once more.

The four Daniels smirked and re-assimilated into one. "I am a figment of your imagination. You know. Just like your ghost powers."

Vlad had three seconds to process this, before dropping back down to the floor with a violent and inelegant crash. He scanned around, desperately trying to relocate 'Daniel', but he was no longer anywhere to be found.

"Curse you, you infernal child!" Vlad swore, to the room in general. And even though he wasn't _absolutely _sure, he added "Damned ghosts!" onto the end.

Wait. This wasn't his mansion's dining room...

* * *

"Poor man..." said Maddie the Real Person, observing Vlad through a reinforced glass window. "A skeptic from day one, and now he's reduced to thinking he's a ghost..."

"Mads, stop." Said Jack, commandingly sweeping his wife away from the window. "It was my fault the proto-portal exploded."

Maddie said nothing, and swept herself back to the door. It had been thirty years since their college friend had sustained such a severe brain injury, and really it kind of _was _both of their faults. Jack had made the mistake, but it was her that didn't stop Vlad from standing so close to the contraption.

Idly, the woman wondered what sort of life the man led, encapsulated entirely within his own mind. According to some of his confused rantings she had gone on to become a ghost hunter. The idea wasn't that unflattering. Perhaps this was a fake reality, and Vlad's strange, warped version was actually the _real _one.

It would have been an _interesting _one, no doubt about it...


End file.
